=head1 pod2axpoint.xsl

=head1 WHAT IS IT?

axpoint2mgp.xsl - Stylesheet to convert AxPoint to Magicpoint format

This is proof-of-concept software that implements a couple of nice
features for simple presentations. The goal was: write presentations
in POD and run them in either acrobat reader or with the Magicpoint
presentation kit.

Depending on future development, this neat little hack may go either
way:

=over 4

=item

If AxPoint becomes really useable, probably only pod2axpoint.xsl will
survive. The author of AxPoint has excellent plans...

=item

If people continue to prefer MagicPoint over AxPoint, probably
axpoint2mgp.xsl will get the missing features

=back

In any case, if you need to write slides B<now>, you get the best of
three worlds: B<POD, AxPoint, and MagicPoint>.

=head1 SYNOPSIS

This is not perl, so we have no standard installation path. Keep the
source of this distribution around and write your pod within its root
directory.

	make foo.pdf       # creates foo.pdf from foo.pod
	make foo.mgp       # creates foo.mgp from foo.pod

=head1 DESCRIPTION

Pod is convenient to write markup.

AxPoint and Magicpoint are powerful presentation techniques.

Since version 0.12 of Pod::SAX you can convert (a broad subset of) POD
to (a sufficiently large subset of) AxPoint.

With this distribution of axpoint2mgp.xsl you can convert the same
subset of POD to a sufficiently large subset of MagicPoint.

This means you have the advantage of writing POD and the advantage of
the free choice between AxPoint and MagicPoint for the price of
narrowing the available features.

=head1 MISSING

We only support a subset of AxPoint. See the pod2axpoint.xsl manpage
for the limitations. In short, all of the transition tricks, graphics,
color and SVG are not supported.

More annoying is the fact that currently there is no way to specify
the parameters for the title page of the presentation within POD. You
will need to slightly adjust the two invoved XSLT stylesheets to fit
your needs.

=head1 TITLE PAGE, PAUSE

You are expected to edit pod2axpoint.xsl to contain the speaker and
email in order to produce a modest title page. Yes, B<sorry>, if you
need more than that on the title page, please fix both pod2axpoint.xsl
and axpoint2mgp.xsl.

After you have made your title page, you need to decide globally if
you want to I<pause> after each and every item or if you want whole
pages be displayed immediately. The default configuration displays
whole pages at once.

=over 4

=item

To change that for AxPoint, you need to hack pod2axpoint.xsl,
and

=item

to change that for Magicpoint, you need to set the global
variable C<pause> to C<%pause> in the axpoint2mgp.xsl.

=back

=head1 PREREQUISITES, HOWTO

At the time of this writing (2002-11-04) you need Pod::SAX version
0.11 or newer. Matt Sergeant has confirmed he will apply my patch for
the next release. If you only find version 0.11, you need to apply my
patch patch.podsax-20021028.txt which comes with this distribution.

You need to build and install Pod::SAX and then copy pod2axpoint.xsl
from the Pod::SAX distribution to this directory.

You also need XML::SAX::Writer and XML::Handler::AxPoint installed
and you need xsltproc from the libxslt library.

Both the script axpoint and the program xsltproc must be in your
PATH.

Finally, write your POD in a file, say C<foo.pod>, and type

	make foo.pdf       # creates foo.pdf from foo.pod
	make foo.mgp       # creates foo.mgp from foo.pod

=cut
